


Finders Keepers

by SuperBlondie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M, Soulmates, just some cute kidfic stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25808383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperBlondie/pseuds/SuperBlondie
Summary: In a universe in which soulmates find whatever their other half loses, Junmyeon finds a black sock on his desk that isn't his.5+1 moments of finding, losing, and everything in between.
Relationships: Kim Junmyeon | Suho/Oh Sehun, Park Chanyeol/Wu Yi Fan | Kris
Comments: 31
Kudos: 207





	Finders Keepers

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! This fic was commissioned by Honey Bee on Twitter! I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> I don't know why, but I felt pulled in a kid!fic direction. I thought it would be very fun and cute and wholesome. 
> 
> All hail Mr. Snuffles, our gentleman elephant overlord.

Junmyeon is fourteen when a singular black sock shows up on his desk one Thursday night. It isn’t his, he can tell that by the fact that it’s got a hole in the toe. His mom may nag him about cleaning his room, like,  _ all  _ the time, but at least he doesn’t walk around in holey socks. He sews them up himself, just like his Nana taught him.

So, when he finds that single black sock on his desk after he comes back from eating dinner, he immediately snatches it up and runs back downstairs, screaming, “Mom! Mom! I’ve got a soulmate!”

Soulmates are pretty rare. His science teacher says everyone has only a one in a ten thousand chance of having a soulmate. Which didn’t leave Junmyeon with much of a chance, especially because in their school of four hundred kids, there was a kid who had already met his soulmate. 

Yifan has been finding his soulmate’s lost stuff since he was six and Chanyeol lost his favorite teddy bear. It was lucky that Chanyeol’s family decided to take him to the zoo the same day that Junmyeon’s class decided to go for a field trip, or else Chanyeol probably wouldn’t have gotten his bear back for  _ years.  _

It all worked out in the end though, because Chanyeol left his teddy bear behind at a gas station on the way to the zoo and Yifan found it in his backpack on the bus, also on the way to the zoo. So Chanyeol’s parents didn’t have to deal with too bad of a tantrum, just had to hold out until Yifan and Junmyeon ran away from their teacher— Yifan, to give back the bear, and Junmyeon, because Yifan was his best friend and they went everywhere together.

Junmyeon’s science teacher says that soulmates can be drawn together like magnets, and that that’s why Yifan was able to find Chanyeol even though they were on opposite sides of the zoo. 

No matter how it happened, it happened, and Yifan and Chanyeol are The Soulmates of the school. The teachers always coo when Yifan walks Chanyeol to his classes and when Chanyeol goes to Yifan’s homeroom so they can eat lunch together and argue about which video game they’re going to play on their weekly sleepover that Friday. Junmyeon doesn’t mind Chanyeol that much. He’s nice enough for a twelve-year-old and he’ll share some of his homemade lunch sometimes if his mom packs too much.

Maybe Junmyeon had been a little bit jealous that Chanyeol had taken over part of his role as Yifan’s best friend. But he couldn’t care less now because this black sock means  _ he  _ has a soulmate too.

And he’ll bet that his soulmate is ten times cooler than Chanyeol and his ferrets.

—

The next thing Junmyeon finds is a bag of dog treats under his bed. He was searching underneath his bed for his soccer jersey. Junmyeon isn't a big fan of soccer, but Luhan is and he’d gotten him the jersey of the one player he can recognize during a match for his last birthday. He doesn’t wear it a lot, just when Luhan invites him over to watch a match and play Mario Party with Yifan until two in the morning. There are no games coming up for the next few weeks though. 

It’s just that Junmyeon’s mom is coming upstairs in thirty minutes to make sure he hasn’t turned his room into a biohazard. And Junmyeon is just pretty sure the horrible smell coming from underneath his bed is the jersey, tossed down there, unwashed, after the last sleepover.

A messy room is okay, so long as Junmyeon doesn’t mind never being able to find what he needs when he needs it, but a  _ dirty  _ room means spending all day Sunday scouring it clean from top to bottom. His mom will even make him vacuum his closet and wipe down the baseboards like they do every year for spring cleaning. 

Junmyeon has gaming plans for this weekend, plans that do not involve scrubbing every surface in his room clean. So, he went looking for the source of the nasty smell emanating from under his bed.

He gets a big bag of those green dog treats that look like little toothbrushes instead.

Junmyeon first wonders if he somehow managed to shove a bag of Byul’s treats under his bed. It wouldn’t exactly be out of the question, but he can’t think of a reason why he’d bring a bag of dog treats up to his room. The other option is that Byul brough the bag up here herself and left them under his bed to eat them later. It’s a little more believable, except that Byul very rarely goes up the stairs on her own now, preferring to be carried in her advanced age. Building off the fact that Junmyeon’s dog is old and has some health problems that mean she can only eat certain, special treats his mom has to order online, Junmyeon realizes that these aren’t even Byul’s treats.

“So they’ve got a dog,” Junmyeon says to himself as he walks across the room and sets the bag of dog treats next to the black sock in the special part of his closet he cleared out for all his soulmate’s stuff. It was his mom’s idea, somewhere to keep all his soulmate’s lost items safe. 

He likes it; it could turn into a pretty good way of figuring out what kind of person his soulmate is, putting all their stuff together and seeing all the little pieces of their life.

Just two weeks in, and Junmyeon already knows that his soulmate doesn’t seem to mind having holes in the toes of their socks and that his soulmate has a little dog—the bag of dog treats says they’re for dogs under fifteen pounds.

He wonders what his soulmate has done with the pair of crocs and the three tubes of chapsticks he’s lost. Junmyeon screws up his face at the thought. Hopefully they don’t think Junmyeon is some kind of weirdo obsessed with chapstick. His mom just buys chapstick in packs of three and he’s very forgetful. Maybe he should start trying to lose stuff that makes him look cooler.

“Junmyeon, honey, I’m coming up!” He startles at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. He dives for his bed, hoping he can find his jersey before his mom comes in, all thoughts of his soulmate forgotten.

—

Junmyeon has never truly known fear until he loses Mr. Snuffles, the stuffed elephant he got for Christmas when he was three and has slept with nearly every night since. He keeps him tucked into the top corner of his bed, between the pillow and the wall, so it’s not like he could just disappear. But when Junmyeon climbs into bed that night, there is no tophat-wearing elephant in sight.

He rips all the sheets off the bed, squirms his whole body underneath the bed, shifts the mattress half off its frame just in case Mr. Snuffles got stuck, even shouts for his parents to come help him look because, well, it’s  _ Mr. Snuffles _ . 

It is all for nothing though, and Junmyeon is forced to remake his bed and go to sleep. after his dad declares the search suspended until the morning. He lies in bed, pretending that he doesn’t want to cry. 

His dad sighs. “Listen, buddy.” He sits on the edge of the bed and musses Junmyeon’s hair. “We’ll find him in the morning. Byul probably dragged him off somewhere. Mom and I will check the usual hiding spots and bring Mr. Snuffles in if we find him, okay? And even if we don’t find him, remember that he’s not lost forever. You’ve got a soulmate that would take excellent care of Mr. Snuffles in your stead.”

Junmyeon nods, but he still feels so sad without his elephant.

Turns out that having a soulmate who finds everything you lose does nothing to make the whole losing stuff part of the deal any easier. It does in some cases, like when Junmyeon lost a sweatshirt his aunt got him that was three sizes too big, it was nice to know that he would find it again later on when it actually fit him. But losing important stuff is still really, really hard.

Junmyeon’s dad kisses his forehead goodnight before heading back out to the living room where Junmyeon’s mom is interrogating Byul about a certain gentleman elephant. “Close the door please,” Junmyeon calls before he goes.

His bedroom door closes with a  _ snick  _ and he’s left in the dark. It feels like he’s a little kid again, getting a kiss goodnight from his dad. He guesses that it  _ is _ sort of childish to get so upset about a stuffed animal. But he’s only fourteen, he’s still a child in a lot of ways, so it’s not anything to be  _ too  _ embarrassed over. 

He’ll probably be super embarrassed in the morning, actually, but right now he’s sad and he just wants Mr. Snuffles to help him sleep.

Junmyeon hopes his soulmate doesn’t think he’s some baby or something. He wonders if his soulmate has a little space in their closet for all his stuff like he does, if that’s where they put Mr. Snuffles—he knows there’s no way Byul took his elephant, so it probably fell between his bed and the mattress and the universe decided it was lost enough to send to his soulmate for safekeeping. 

Junmyeon hopes not. Mr. Snuffles would hate to be stuck in a closet. He likes to sleep somewhere soft and comfy, preferably in a bed, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Junmyeon rolls over onto his side, back to where Mr. Snuffles normally stands guard over him with his top hat and monocle, and squeezes his eyes shut. It takes him a long, long time, but he eventually falls asleep. And he dreams of Mr. Snuffles tucked under blue blankets.

—

One Saturday morning, Junmyeon gets a text from Yifan asking him to take Chanyeol’s place in their weekly basketball game with the other boys in Yifan’s neighborhood. Junmyeon usually isn’t invited, nor does he ever ask to be. Basketball isn’t his thing, much more of a gamer and a theater kid, but he’s happy to fill in whenever Chanyeol’s grounded or visiting his family around the holidays. It’s a grounding this time; he didn’t do his math homework last week and his parents didn’t even let him spend the night at Yifan’s on Friday, much less play basketball on Saturday.

So, Junmyeon shows up at Yifan’s house at noon to play for a little while in Chanyeol’s place. 

Baekhyun and Jongdae, the two boys who live in the houses at the other end of the neighborhood, are already waiting when Junmyeon’s mom drops him off. They’re Chanyeol’s age and pretty cool, not too competitive and not so immature that it’s like playing with babies. They’re Chanyeol’s Junmyeon and Luhan, according to Yifan. 

All four of them play for three hours, until they’re all sweaty and gross and the game has to end in a tie because no one bothered to keep score. That’s Chanyeol’s job, apparently, because he’s the only one who really cares about winning.

Junmyeon is just glad he remembered to put on deodorant before he came over, because Baekhyun and Yifan sure didn’t and it makes the post-game dogpile on Yifan’s lawn nauseating. He gags when Baekhyun shifts and puts his rancid armpit right in Junmyeon’s face. “You’re so disgusting,” he yells, “Hasn’t anyone taught you about personal hygiene?”

“Says you,” Baekhyun pushes himself to stick his tongue out at Junmyeon with a defiant sneer. “Channie says your room is a trash heap! At least  _ I  _ don’t have dirty clothes lying around.”

“No, you just wear them for four days in a row.” Jongdae squirms his way out of the pile, and out of Baekhyun’s slapping range.

Yifan gets up a few seconds later, stomach growling. “Come on, I’m hungry. Bitch later, food now.”

Baekhyun and Jongdae gasp, because they’re twelve and still don’t swear. Junmyeon just pushes himself to his feet and walks over to where his water bottle and jacket are lying on the sidewalk. 

He narrows his eyes, forehead creasing as he looks around for the little tupperwares of kimbap his mom let him take for lunch. He remembers grabbing it out of the fridge and taking it with him into the car, but he doesn’t remember what he did once they got to Yifan’s house. Junmyeon showed up late, so he didn’t go inside and put the tupperware in their fridge. He must have left his food in the car. Or it fell out when he got out at the gas station to buy a bottle of gatorade. 

“Ugh! Come on!”

“What is it,” Yifan asks.

“Forgot my lunch, that’s all.” It’s not that big of a deal. Yifan’s parents don’t mind feeding another hungry teenage boy; they’re used to fueling Yifan and Chanyeol on a regular basis. Junmyeon was just really looking forward to eating that kimbap.

When he lifts up his jacket, he finds a container of kimbap hiding underneath. He lets out a little noise of surprise and crouches down to get a better look. It’s not his tupperware, his tupperware had a red lid while this one’s is black. It looks like real, homemade kimbap inside though. Junmyeon cracks the container open and takes a bite, wondering if his soulmate is eating his kimbap right now too, if they somehow managed a trade through whatever magic binds them together.

He smiles at the thought and eats his new lunch.

—

Junmyeon giggles like a little kid when he opens up his locker and finds the matching twin to the black sock sitting in that reserved, special place in his closet. He understands losing one sock, or maybe losing a pair together, but somehow his soulmate has lost both socks of a pair, but three months apart. His soulmate must be pretty forgetful. Or maybe they’re just young.

At fourteen, Junmyeon considers himself very grown up. He’ll probably be even more grown up when he meets his soulmate in a few years. So, forgetful or not, Junmyeon is pretty sure he’ll be happy to keep everything together for the both of them.

He tucks the sock into his backpack to take home. He’ll probably find a few more things to put on the shelves his dad built for the sole purpose of holding Junmyeon’s soulmate’s stuff. Mondays always seem to be pretty rough on his soulmate, random shit showing up in Junmyeon’s room. 

Yifan complains about how much Chanyeol loses stuff sometimes, but Junmyeon doesn’t really mind his slowly growing hoard of bubble gum wrappers and friendship bracelets. 

He’d never tell anyone but his soulmate, but his chest feels all warm and fluffy when he sees the cutesy things they tend to leave for him to find. It feels like it's his duty to keep his soulmate’s things safe, even the stuff that he’d never be caught dead with otherwise.

He’d never tell anyone, but he thinks he likes his soulmate already.

—

Junmyeon walks beside Yifan and Luhan as they make their way into the school building. Yifan is going on and on about how Chanyeol is suddenly so obsessed with the new kid in his class that it was all he talked about for almost the entire sleepover on Friday night. Junmyeon nods along and makes listening noises at what he hopes are all the right moments like his parents do when they’re on the phone with one of his aunts.

This happens sometimes, Chanyeol getting wrapped up in a new friend and Yifan getting super jealous. It’s never worth the drama; Chanyeol’s always over the hype about his new friend in, like, two weeks and then Yifan is his number one again. But Yifan acts like it’s the end of the world every single time and as his best friends, Junmyeon and Luhan have to treat it with that same seriousness.

Honestly, he doesn’t care  _ that  _ much. But at least he pretends to, unlike Luhan, who very obviously just wants Yifan to stop complaining so he can start talking about the soccer team tryouts next week.

Junmyeon passes the time by fiddling with the bracelet on his wrist. It’s one of the ones his soulmate lost, three different shades of blue all woven together. He knows that he probably shouldn’t be wearing it; it isn’t his and he has no way of knowing if it’s something really important to his soulmate. He just thinks it’s a cool bracelet. 

And it’s kind of nice to wear something he’s pretty sure was made by his soulmate, but that’s not something he’d ever say out loud.

“It’ll be okay,” Junmyeon reassures his friend. He pats Yifan on the back once before shoving his hand in his pockets, the wind suddenly picking up and sending a chill down his spine. “Just give it time.”

“Oh no, my homework! Quick, Chanyeol, catch it! Catch it! Aw man! Wait! Hey, you, can you catch my homework! It’s blowing right to you!”

Junmyeon looks up at the sound of panicked shouting just in time for a piece of paper to smack him in the face. The wind, which is still blowing hard, keeps it in place. For a while, all Junmyeon can do is stand there in shock and quickly growing embarrassment, ears suddenly hot.

“S-sorry. I’m really sorry about that.”

Junmyeon pulls the paper off his face to read the name printed in scrawled handwriting at the top.  _ Oh Sehun.  _

That’s probably whoever is standing right in front of him, sounding all shy and scared like he’s some big, scary high schooler about to punch his teeth in. And he is a high schooler, but he’s not particularly big or scary, and he’s for sure not going to beat someone up because the wind caught their homework and blew it in his face. He just hopes he doesn’t have any papercuts, because that would  _ suck _ .

“It’s okay. Here’s your homework back. Maybe just keep it in your backpack next time.” Junmyeon looks up so he can hand the paper over and sees a kid just a little bit shorter than Chanyeol standing in front of him, a stack of friendship bracelets going both arms. He’s probably Chanyeol’s age, but a lot less dweeby.

Junmyeon doesn’t really care about that though. He’s much, much too concerned with the elephant poking its head out of the top of Sehun’s backpack, top hat and monocle still perfectly in place. 

Sehun takes his homework back with a grateful smile, only to pause and stare at the borrowed blue bracelet on Junmyeon’s wrist.

Chanyeol’s not too far away, frantically explaining that this is the Sehun he was telling Yifan about on Friday, the new kid in class who just moved to their area a week ago.

That would explain all the friendship bracelets. Sehun was probably making and receiving so many that it was impossible to not lose a few. It would also explain all the lost stuff in general, it’s hard to keep track of everything when life is turning upside down.

“I-I’m Junmyeon. Kim Junmyeon. Nice to meet you.” Junmyeon swallows awkwardly, attempting a smile that he’s pretty sure comes out like he’s holding in a fart.

Sehun shoves his homework into the little pocket on his backpack meant for water bottles. Then, he reaches back and carefully pulls Mr. Snuffles free. The elephant is offered up with a big, hopeful smile. “Here, you can take your elephant back. I’m Sehun, but you can call me Sehunnie. All my friends do, and now you’re my best friend, so you  _ have  _ to call me Sehunnie! Well, I guess since you’re my soulmate, you can probably pick your own name for me. But I get the final say on if I like it or not, okay?”

Junmyeon just nods, hit with the knowledge that he’s probably not ever going to win an argument against his soulmate, not even once they’re all grown up. And, honestly, he’s pretty okay with that.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you liked it, please leave a kudos and a comment! You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/killmeDO) and [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/killmeDO) Sometimes I talk about what I'm working on next and post snippets! I'd love to hear from you <3


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